Jesus of suburbia - 'III. I don't care' singing and playing

This part of the song is quite hard to sing and play at the same time because the strumming pattern is quite fast and inconsistent, which sometimes throws me off my singing because they are in time to each other. Vocally, the only challenging part is the words because it is quite wordy, and I need to work on my articulation because sometimes when I'm singing I slur my words and this is made even worse by the fact that it is very wordy. I also need to work on my breath control, for one particular part in this sub-song is very quick vocally and wordy, also with fast and aggressive guitar strum at the end of ever two bars - I think to work on this, I just need to practice it, just vocals first slowly then focus on articulating properly and increasing the stamina of my voice in terms of breath control and oxygen intake. The guitar is fairly simple for this part so I won't need to practice it on it's own therefore I will just put them both together and start slowly, and gradually build up in tempo so I can get used to focussing on my articulation and musical stamina at the same time. The next part is a challenge too, the strumming pattern is very fast and inconsistent, and it doesn't match the beat of the vocal melody so it is hard to sing and play this part. So to practice this, I simply played it slowly to get used to and comfortable with the strumming pattern, and then I put the vocals over the top, layering it bit by bit. This way helped me to feel more confident with playing and singing simultaneously. I think me breath control was no problem here, possibly because it is not as wordy nor vocally quick so it did not pose a challenge to me.

Jesus of suburbia - III. I Don't Care

Today I started to learn the next sub song 'III. I don't care' which is probably the hardest out of the 3 so far because it quite a substantial tempo change, and the strumming pattern is almost like it doesn't follow the 4/4 time signature that the song is in, but it does - it just throws me off a little bit. It starts with a short guitar solo which is quite easy, there is one slide from 2nd fret to 7th fret which is hard because it's such a big gap and it's hard to make sure I slide to right fret as it is quite quick - but I practiced this by just educating my finger on how far to slide, and then practiced it slowly and gradually increased the speed. When it comes out of the interlude, the power chord part with the funny strumming pattern is hard mainly because of the strumming pattern (as mentioned above) but also the strumming is all down strums and it's very quick so it's quite hard to keep up. To practice this, I did a guitar warm up exercise (see warm up video) and really focused on my wrist off my strumming hand to loosen it up and increase my strumming speed and fluency. This really helped because I felt a lot more comfortable when doing the fast strumming, and my wrist wasn't aching like before. Also, for some reason there are no tabs for this part of the song, so I had to kind of play by ear to get the notation right.

Jesus of suburbia: Guitar - 'I. Jesus of suburbia and II. City of the damned' keeping correct tempo 23/09/16

In today's practice I learnt the first two 'sub songs' 'I. Jesus of suburbia' and 'II. City of the damned' and I learnt them both by using tabs with the music score and notation above the tab. Both are quite easy and not very challenging, as it is mainly just using different power chords. The only challenging part about both is the strumming pattern at some points, because when I read what the pattern is, it is different to how I thought it would be from just listening to the track - for example there are up strums where I thought they were down strums, and sometimes there are more strums in a bar than I thought. This threw me off a bit because it is obviously different to what I am used to. I practiced this by playing it slowly to get used to it, and I got faster and faster then eventually played along with the track. I eventually got the strumming pattern, and I now find it easy because I have practiced it a lot. One thing I do need to work on is switching between the bar chords - I have never really felt very comfortable doing bar chords, and in City of damned there is lots of switching between just normal 5 chords (power chords) and bar chords. I practiced this by getting familiar with the bar chord shape and working out the easiest way to switch to them from the power chords. Once I had done this, again I practiced it slowly and got faster and faster to get used to the switch, and I eventually got it however I still find it hard so I do need to keep practicing.

Jesus of suburbia: Vocals - supporting vocals with diaphragm, breath control 28/09/16

In today's practice, I was working on the vocals for this song. I had a vocal run through of the song from start to finish just to get a feel of the pitch, dynamics and general tone of the vocals and so I know what to work on. In terms of pitch, it generally isn't too challenging however at points it does jump quite high. I feel I need to work on these points because when it does go high, my voice sounds quite weak and I feel the strain within my vocal chords. To work on this, I really practiced tensing and squeezing my diaphragm to really push the sound out from my stomach/diaphragm area rather than my throat. Once I practiced it this way, I found that my voice sounded a lot stronger and supported, and I was able to hit the higher pitched notes easier - however I still need to work on/practice this technique because it very hard to get the hang of, and sometimes I don't realise I am singing from my throat. Another aspect I focused on was my breath control; at some points in the song, there are long lines of lyrics with no breathing time, and a few long held notes. I think I covered this quite well as I have had previous practice of breath control and I feel quite confident in holding long notes and controlling my breathing. To practice this, I did a breath control exercise called 'bowman on horse back'. This is where you breathe in as much as possible and hold it, then do a movement, then breathe back out forcefully and quickly from your stomach, making a loud 'boom' sound as you do. This helps to increase your oxygen capacity in your stomach per inhale. I did this a few times to just warm up my diaphragm and practice breath control, then when I applied the technique to the song, I took deep breathes from my stomach and up through my chest - inhaling as much oxygen as possible - before I start to sing so that I can easily hold long notes and/or take less quick grasp of air throughout the song so that the vocals have more flow to them. For my next vocal practice, I need to work on my diction and articulation as sometimes I tend to slur my words when singing. I am also going to focus on the dynamics of my voice, looking at when to increase and decrease my volume depending on the lyrics, dynamics of the music, or whether the music is soft or heavy.

Jesus of Suburbia: Guitar - learning the song 16/09/16

Today I started to learn my first song choice, Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day. I know this song very well (not on guitar) so it shouldn't very hard to learn when it comes to reading the notations.To start with, I listened to the song a few times and learnt the key is in G#m, and from there I learnt chords to the first few sub-songs (the song is a 10 minute track full of 5 'sub-songs'; this I will use this to my advantage when it comes to future rehearsals because I can set myself the goal of learning one sub song each rehearsal). I learnt these chords just by ear just to get the basics down, however next rehearsal I will have the tab notation so I can lean it properly with each technique. I didn't really use any techniques in this rehearsal, because I just learnt the basic chords by ear.